Sunday, March 8, 2009

Birding the East Pond and shoring up the Osprey nest at Jamaica Bay…

My friend Don Riepe and I had talked earlier in the week about doing some work on the Osprey nesting platforms in Jamaica Bay before the arrivals of the Ospreys. Since we wanted to do some work as well in the Bay, we decided on a start time of 12:00 pm, this gave me enough time to get some birding done and birding I did. I birded the East pond for a few hours and in that time I saw Song Sparrows, White-throated Sparrows, Wood Ducks, Buffleheads, Greater and Lesser Scaups, Red-breasted Mergansers, Hooded Mergansers, Mallards, Gadwalls, American Wigeons, American Black Ducks, Redhead Ducks, Common Goldeneye, Greater Cormorant, Double Crested Cormorant, Ring-billed Gulls, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Mute Swans, Northern Shovelers and Ruddy Ducks. Back at the visitor’s center, I had a nice surprise of three field sparrows that were hanging out with Juncos in the newly mowed meadow. By then, it was time to get to work so I met up with Don and together we picked up all the materials needed for the nest repair. Once that was done, we drove onto the West Pond trail over near where the Osprey platform was out in the marsh. Switching to waders, we ventured into the marsh and got the ladder up to the nest platform. A review of the platform showed it to be in rather good shape and so we decided on only shoring up the platform edges. We worked for about an hour getting the repairs completed and also putting up a few Wren nest boxes along the trail. By that time we had expected the tide to be back in, but it wasn’t; we realized that we had run out of time as far as the light was concerned and so the work in the bay was put off for another day. Hopefully by next Thursday or Friday we could get some additional work done before the Osprey’s show up. Share with SociBook.com Bookmark and Share

No comments: